This weekend, the Union Executive Board completed the first round of budgeting for the 2007–2008 fiscal year. We locked ourselves in meeting rooms of the Union and spent three days—instead of the normal two—carefully reviewing budgets for our Union funded organizations. This is a particularly grueling task, and I am proud that the members of the E-Board took their job seriously and budgeted in an incredibly responsible manner. I would also like to thank our advisors Rick Hartt, Martha McElligott, Cameron McLean, Erika Rau, Melissa Termine-Gotez, and Steve Allard. They gave up their weekends to sit through the entire process with us and, as always, proved to be a valuable source of historical precedent and procedural guidance.
Budgets for all clubs and organizations were released yesterday evening. I chose to do this in order to provide club officers with additional time to review their budgets and assemble an appeal by the deadline tomorrow at noon. These appeals will be held this weekend on Saturday. All club officers should have received an e-mail explaining the appeals process. As I stated last week, the Executive Board went into budgeting looking for programs and organizations that do more than just provide an outlet for the expression of a hobby, a culture, or a genre. We were looking at the quality of those programs and the enthusiasm those programs inspired in each organization’s membership. This led to some surprising outcomes this weekend—some of which even I had not predicted.
It is likely that some of you are quite pleased with your budgets while others are not happy at all. I assure you that no matter the outcome of your budget request, each organization was carefully considered and budgeted appropriately. Because I know that folks on this campus thrive on numbers and statistics, I have some numbers for you. Based on only this first-of-many round of budgeting, the average Union club received a subsidy of $5,141.42. Fourteen clubs received subsidies that amounted to less than $500. Forty-one organizations were allocated between $500 and $5,000. The largest 10 club subsidies were all above $10,000. The student organization with the highest subsidy received an allocation to the tune of $37,518.40. On the opposite end of the spectrum, one organization will be contributing $510.00 back to the Union. A total of $784,447.52 was requested by clubs and organizations for next year. We approved a total subsidy of $519,283.38 across all these organizations. Unfortunately, nine of our funded organizations at this point have not received allocations or program approvals for the 2007–2008 school year. Some of these organizations were no longer serving their club purpose. Some of these organizations no longer have an active membership. Each is a unique case with a unique set of reasons behind it. But none of this is yet set in stone. The appeals process allows your club officers to appeal decisions by the E-Board by coming before them and explaining their budget requests and clarifying issues that E-Board members may not understand. There is, however, a large caveat to consider before applying for an appeal. When appealing a budget, the entire budget is open for reconsideration, so the Board is free to reallocate funds from other locations in the budget, award additional funds, or withhold previous funds based on the content of the appeal.
Though appeals are the last major portion of budgeting that the general student body participates in, the process is far from complete. We still must consider budgets for our varsity athletics, the entirety of the Union’s operations (Bookstore, Mueller Center, etc.), and our administrative budgets. This process will play out for several more weeks and result in a final budget recommendation and activity fee increase to your Student Senate. Please let me know if I can answer questions of any kind during our budgeting process.
